What’s your picture of God?

What’s your picture of God?

It all began when I sent around this poem by Francisco X. Alarcón:

Prayer

I want a god
as my accomplice
who spends nights
in houses
of ill repute
and gets up late
on Saturdays

a god
who whistles
through the streets,
and trembles
before the lips
of his lover

a god
who waits in line
at the entrance
of movie houses
and likes to drink
café au lait

a god
who spits
blood from
tuberculosis and
doesn’t even have
enough for bus fare

a god
knocked
unconscious
by the billy club
of a policeman
at a demonstration

a god
who pisses
out of fear
before the flaring
electrodes
of torture

a god
who hurts
to the last
bone and
bites the air
in pain

a jobless god
a striking god
a hungry god
a fugitive god
an exiled god
an enraged god

a god
who longs
from jail
for a change
in the order
of things

I want a
more godlike
god

(C) By Francisco X. Alarcon
(Translated by Francisco Aragon)

The first response I received was from a Jewish friend: “I think if I were a Christian, I’d really love this, Phil!  I sure get the thoughts behind it.  As a Jew I believe that that this is what God expects US to do…!!”

The second response was quite different: “Most of us have always wanted a personal anthropomorphic God who cared about our lives (and others we know of) as the one that seems to be wanted by this poet. Who/what do we pray to when we outgrow that belief (if not the need)?”

While I appreciate these responses and think they are both valid, I’m coming at the poem from a different perspective. Emotionally, I’m back with Episcopal priest Malcolm Boyd’s 1956 book of prayers, Are You Running with Me, Jesus? Does anyone still remember the amazing impact of that book?

At the intellectual theological level, the Japanese theologian, Kazoh Kitamori, came out ten years before Boyd with his Theology of the Pain of God (English translation, 1964). A few years later, Juergen Moltmann followed with his The Crucified God, writing, “When the crucified Jesus is called “the image of the invisible God,” the meaning is that THIS is God, and God is like THIS.” Feminist theologians—Sallie McFague and Rita Nakashima Brock, for example—reinforced this theological trend in the 1980s.

In the meantime, the classic dogma of the Two Natures of Christ is increasingly understood to speak of God in human nature. When I was in graduate school, it was said that Christ was both human and divine, but if you emphasize the humanity, you may be termed a heretic. That is not so true today. We recognize that both humanity and divinity must be given equal weight, which is admittedly very difficult.

Alarcón deals with these issues, brilliantly if unintentionally, in the ending of his poem. After rehearsing the human qualities of God, he closes,

I want a
more godlike
god

God’s “godness” is not diminished by being jobless, striking, hungry,
fugitive, exiled, and enraged—rather that makes God “more godlike.”

I agree that we should not make God anthropomorphic and also that we should be God’s presence in the world—through our good deeds, our mitzvoth, as Jews say. But I also think Alarcón has got it right.

One responder raised the related issue: Who/what do we pray to when we outgrow the belief in an anthropomorphic God? A Jewish friend here at Montgomery Place asks me, “Just who is this God I believe in?” I tell her, “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God who said to Moses, I am Who I am.” To which she responds, “but that doesn’t help me!”

It all depends what your picture of God is—what’s yours?
Who do you pray to—if you pray?

.
Phil Hefner 7/25/2017